wrote in message
...
On Sun, 8 Feb 2009 22:45:57 -0800, "Calif Bill"
wrote:


"HK" wrote in message
...
Zombie of Woodstock wrote:
On Sun, 08 Feb 2009 20:39:46 -0500, HK wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3uyWRkoX4o

I had more fun with my Gilbert Chemistry set than you can imagine.
That's what got me interested in science and math to tell the truth.

My favorite thing was mixing up test sets for soil acidity, pH and
stuff like that. I even made a chemical Barometer once.

Man that was fun. My brother has all our American Flyer train sets -
one
of my Dad's
friends at the Milwaukee Sentinel was a huge model train buff and gave
us a bunch of stuff every year. I never got into trains for some
reason - I was more into radios and chemicals. :)

--

If we aren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?


I had chem sets and erector sets, too. I used to build some humongous
stuff with the erector sets, but if memory serves, there were no lock
washers, so everything eventually sort of loosed itself to bits.

I liked the part of the chemistry set where you made rocket fuel, etc. As
to erector sets, never had one, but since dad owned one of the bigger
machine shops in the area, I got to build with real steel. Could turn out
a
great breech loading cannon on the lathe at 10 years old. Then could put
the chemistry set to use. Jetex fuses were the purchased parts.



The best amateur rocket fuel for the masses was potassium nitrate and
sugar, baked in the oven. You could put this in an empty Crossman CO2
cylinder with the end drilled out to 1/4" and shoot a Bering cigar
tube into the next zip code.
Harder to get was zinc dust for zinc dust and sulphur but that went
right up too.
Don't use match heads. That makes a grenade. ;-)

We used zinc dust and sulphur. For some reason we had no problem getting
the zinc. And since grandparents and uncle ran a farm, powdered sulphur was
available in gross amounts. We used a lot of aluminum tube the we necked
down the nozzle portion. They went extremely well.